ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.* PROFESSOR LIONEL S. BEALE, V.P., F.R.S., IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed. A paper on "Biblical Astronomy" was read by Lieut.-Colonel G. Mackinlay, late R.A. T BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY. By Lieutenant-Colonel G. MACKINLAY (late R.A.). HE present seems a good time to consider the subject of (1) Biblical Scholarship. (2) Discoveries and decipherment of ancient inscriptions, etc. (3) Astronomy. Scholarship. It must be remembered that the languages of the Bible are comparable to a tool used by the divine Author; those languages are foreign ones to us, and a mere literal translation cannot in every case give the full meaning. During a residence in Spain, I found that even a certain mastery of the Spanish language was not in itself sufficient to bring me into real contact with the people. I had also to study the Spanish character and the Spanish attitude of mind. The difficulty of rendering the exact meaning intended by the writers of the Bible, with their ancient Eastern methods of expression, is certainly greater than that which exists at the present moment in translating a modern European book into English. * Monday, 20th February, 1905. As Max Müller puts it, "when first we begin to learn a new language it seems easy . but the more we learn it, the more difficult do we find it to discover words which will really square with our own words.” As the divine scriptures are written for all nations and for all times, the main essential truths are plainly put forward ; but when we come to seek for the full force of some of its sentences we thankfully accept the help afforded by careful scholarship. Ancient Inscriptions, etc.-The fast accumulating translations of ancient inscriptions afford ample confirmation of the numerous Biblical allusions to the worship of the host of heaven. Great assistance is given to ancient chronology; the account of a total eclipse recorded as seen at Nineveh 763 B.C. has been verified by calculation as having occurred at the date stated, when the band of totality passed about 100 miles North of the city. The eccentricities of the Egyptian Calendar, which moved its months through the seasons in a long cycle of some 1,565 years, have been helpful; as when it is stated that the Nile rose on a certain day of any one month, the date is necessarily fixed within a very few years. Sir Norman Lockyer and others have shown that the dates of the construction of various Egyptian and Greek temples oriented to the risings of stars can be known within comparatively a few years, as the precession of the equinoxes (see Appendix) gradually rendered their central avenues of pillars quite unfitted for their astronomical purpose of allowing the rays of the rising star to enter and illumine the images in the central interior shrines, after a period which varied according to circumstances, but which may have averaged 300 years. Even the statements of astrology giving the position of planets at the birth of a child afford chronological data ; Professor Flinders Petrie thinks that the position of the planets indicated on certain ancient Egyptian diagrams show that the dates of birth of Rameses II. and Rameses VI. were respectively B.C. 1318 and 1198. We may, however, doubt the accuracy of the records in some cases, as a desire to please royalty may have tempted the artists to depict more favourable astrological arrangements of the planets than the true ones. Contrast of Standpoints.-The appearance of the celestial orbs has little interest to most of us moderns, unless we are astronomers, surveyors, or sailors; we have no temptation to worship them, nor do we expect any control of our future by their movements. Our climate prevents us from seeing them, especially when they are near the horizon, except at uncertain intervals; a large number of us live in towns lighted by gas and electricity, and thus the brilliancy of the stars is eclipsed. If we travel at night, we enter a well lighted railway carriage and we look outside it but little; we have good almanacks and clocks, and consequently most of us have no need to consult the celestial time-keepers, which regulate the earthly ones, and as our civil calendar has nothing to do with the moon, the variation in its appearance is not a matter of importance. The modern astronomer is accustomed to refer his observations for accuracy to the vertical meridian. He believes most of the theories of the ancients were wrong, and consequently he generally bestows little thought on the efforts of man long ago to wrestle with the problems of the heavens, notwithstanding the fact that the length of the year, the correct arrangement of the calendar, and the direction of true north, were accurately known from the results of laborious observations some thousands of years ago. But in Bible times how different was the standpoint. The heathen nations surrounding the Hebrews paid great attention to astronomy, and this is proved by the frequent, perhaps invariable, orientation of their temples to the rising or setting of the sun at a solstice, or at an equinox, or to the rising of some star. The study of astronomy was intimately connected with heathen worship. Professor Sayce tells us that the first known observatories in the world were those attached to Babylonian temples, which were generally dedicated to one of the heavenly host, or to some god connected with one of them by ancient myth. The priests were the observers, and under the authority of the king they regulated the calendar; they dabbled in astrology, doubtless for gain, and in order to keep up their power over the people. The Hebrew authors of the Scriptures, on the other hand, drew attention to the heavens in order to declare the glory of God, or to make some grand parallel to His grace and mercy. In Bible lands there is a bright clear atmosphere and a genial climate: there was little artificial light at night, and that only dim, and there was little hiding of the heavens during travel. The lunar month was employed by the Hebrews for their calendar, and consequently the position and appearance of the moon indicated the progress of the month. Almanacks and time-measuring instruments were few and rude, and hence the ancients generally must have frequently consulted the heavenly bodies for various purposes. Astro nomical observations were generally made on the visible horizon of risings and settings, although some, as at the Great Pyramid, were doubtless made on the vertical meridian. The contrast between our modern western and the ancient eastern use of astronomy for practical purposes was brought to my notice in a very matter-of-fact sort of way some 30 years ago, when travelling with my wife by ordinary marches in the lower valleys towards Cashmere. We were in the habit of rising about an hour before daybreak, so as to be dressed and ready to start with the earliest streak of dawn, and thus avoid as much as possible the heat of the coming day. The native servants used to look at the positions of the stars during the night from time to time, until they judged that it was about an hour before daybreak, and as they did this from night to night they became very fairly accurate. They then called me, and I looked at my watch, and we got up at once or delayed a little according as their estimate had been fast or slow. One day a very long march down a hot valley was before us, and I was specially anxious to start in good time. Unfortunately my watch had stopped the day before, and it was the only timekeeper in all our little party. Before turning in at night I had a good look at the stars, and roughly estimated what their position should be at the time for our rising next morning. I got up during the night to look for myself, and then I found the heavens indicating, as I thought, about an hour before dawn; but not a move did I perceive among the servants and coolies, and when I woke them up they assured me that it was not yet time. However I insisted upon it that daybreak must soon come, so we rose, struck tents, packed up and drank the early coffee, but still no signs of morning! It was no use to wait, so off we started in the dark with a lantern; presently the path led into a dark wood, and then it skirted the edge of a hill with a precipitous fall on the left hand, which made it somewhat dangerous without daylight. Our progress was slow, and I began to realise that I had made a mistake, and that the Easterns who had been accustomed to judge of the time night after night from the position of the stars, were more to be trusted for practical purposes than the Western who attempted to do so for the first time after a single rough estimate the night before. It is no uncommon thing for a servant in India to glance at the position of the sun in the heavens, and then make a very, fair estimate of the time of day. Of course an Englishman could also do this if he practised this habit of observation, but our universal possession of watches and clocks hinders us from seeking to attain this facility of telling the time direct from the heavens. I was wondering the other day whether the intelligent modern would recur to the ancient methods of making direct use of the movements of the stars, when deprived of the ordinary clocks, etc., of present day civilisation. I therefore enquired of those who had been engaged in our late war in South Africa, and soon heard the following from an army nursing sister, Miss Watson Tulloh, R.R.C. A young officer suffering from measles was a patient under her care at Norval's Pont in an isolation tent, and during convalescence he watched for her daily visits. As he had no clock or watch, he made use of the heavens, and he soon noticed that the nurse's last round, which was about a couple of hours after the winter sunset, was paid just when a bright star rose over a neighbouring kopje, and on the following evenings the same star again gave him due notice, though the length of warning increased a little each time. The incident would probably have been forgotten except for the facts which occurred afterwards: a false report of the officer's death, accompanied by a portrait, was published in the newspapers; a little later he was wounded in an engagement and brought back to the same hospital and to the same nurse. She recognised his features at once, but thought he must be some near relative of her former patient, and was only assured of his identity by his reminding her of the bright star rising behind the kopje! We may conveniently divide our subject into the following sections: : 1. Jehovah, Creator and Ruler. 2. Worship of the heavenly bodies forbidden. 3. The Hebrew calendar. 4. Direction and orientation. 5. The heavens. 6. Grand astronomical statements. 7. Figurative allusions. (1) JEHOVAH, CREATOR AND RULER. In Gen. i, 1, we are told that God created the heaven, and afterwards in the sixteenth verse that He made or ordained the sun, moon and stars for their purposes. I do not stop to discuss how the current theories about the origin of the universe fit in |